OUTDOORS: Sweet songbird or cold-blooded killer?

John Pitarresi

Wednesday

Jul 4, 2018 at 11:36 AMJul 4, 2018 at 11:36 AM

I will not name the lady.

I didn’t know her well, but she had written me a few times, and we spoke on the phone a few times more. Maybe we met in person once. I think we did, but this was a long time ago, so I’m not really sure.

Anyway, this lady loved bluebirds. The pretty little creatures are New York state’s bird, and she did a lot of work promoting their health and welfare across the state.

We were talking one day when she said, "Don’t tell anyone I said this, but if you ever see any wrens, kill them."

I didn’t expect to hear that, but I wasn’t exactly surprised by the sentiment. Wrens, also pretty little creatures, are well known to be deadly enemies of bluebirds. The species share a preference for nesting in cavities and eating insects, so they are competitors, and wrens are, apparently, more aggressive. They’ll destroy bluebird eggs, kill nestlings, and drive away — or, I suppose, kill if possible — mature birds.

As it happened, I rarely saw wrens around my yard, and I wouldn’t have killed one in any case. I imagine the best I could do was view them with a jaundiced eye, or maybe chase them away from bluebird boxes or other potential nesting sites when I came across them.

But, you know, wrens are like most wild creatures — narrowly and intently focused on their own propagation and survival. If it takes killing bluebirds or anything else to get the job done, they will do it.

I recently was reminded of the sometimes homicidal tendencies of wrens by David M. Bird (I’m not going to write "the aptly named David M. Bird," because that probably has been done a thousand times, and … oh, gosh, I guess I just did) who writes the "Watching Bird Behavior" column for Bird Watcher’s Digest. The column in the January-February issue, titled "Unexpected Predators," detailed some surprising instances of killing of and by birds.

I long ago came to the realization that wild animals do what they have to do to get by, but crows teaming up to ambush and devour bats as they emerged from an abandoned Michigan copper mine? Yes, crows are smart, but … Just the idea of eating a bat, even if you’re a crow, made me squirm a bit.

Bird also cited western meadowlarks in Wyoming eating dying and dead birds along a highway after a spring snowstorm. The meadowlarks, which normally eat plant matter and insects, went beyond that, though, also stalking, killing and consuming healthy horned larks, longspurs, robins and juncos, and even cannibalizing fellow meadowlarks.

The thing that just about knocked me out, however, was Bird’s report that praying mantises kill and eat small birds — often hummingbirds, but nearly two dozen other species, as well, usually those caught in mist nets used by researchers — and go about the business in a very gruesome manner. (DON’T READ THE NEXT SENTENCE IF YOU ARE SQUEAMISH!). Mantises have been observed eating through the eyes of birds and into the cranial cavity, by which time the bird probably is dead. Or we hope so.

Of course, the mantises might feel that’s fair, because birds eat a lot of them.

In his very next column, in the March/April issue of BWD, Bird printed a report from a reader who watched a great egret, normally a consumer of small fish, frogs and the like, spear and eat a female cardinal. That’s just not right.

Other animals we don’t think of as meat eaters will kill and devour other animals if need be. I’ve never seen a red squirrel kill anything, but they have the reputation. They aren’t popular in any case because of their propensity for occupying attics, uninsulated wallse, and a variety of other spaces where they don’t need to be.

How about deer? A lot of us are well aware that these are not always gentle animals. They eat all kinds of plants, and can make pests of themselves doing so, but apparently not all of them consider themselves strict vegetarians. Deer have been observed walking through meadows eating mice. They also have been seen eating eggs of wild birds, chasing nestlings, and eating baby songbirds right out of their nests. I’ve also seen a video of a young whitetail buck tracking a baby bird and then eating it while the parent birds try to chase him away. That kind of made me ill.

It all seems to go against what we’d like to believe are the laws of nature and upsets our images of what certain animals are like and how they should act. Sometimes they don’t follow the rules and do whatever they want to do.

The point? I guess it is just that it is a tough world out there, but you already knew that.

Write to John Pitarresi at 60 Pearl Street, New Hartford, N.Y. 13413 or jcpitarresi41@gmail.com or call him at 315-724-5266.

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